The Ultimate in Bad Taste

This, to me, is about the weirdest thing I ever read in the newspaper. Well, after invading Iraq with too few troops because someone else, living elsewhere, attacked the World Trade Center. Or that the US is systematically torturing people, and elite lawyers are writing opinions justifying it or working out strategies to allow the torturers to avoid prosecution.

3 Responses to The Ultimate in Bad Taste

I like the idea of having a permanent if somewhat morbid memorial of a loved one in diamond form. Let’s face it, of diamonds or ashes in an urn, one is a lot less likely to be spilled or otherwise molested than the other.

Listen, there is a LOT of info out there revealing the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection. Get hold of of Stephen Hayes “The Connection” … Laurie Mylroie’s “The War Against America” and Davis’ book “The Third Terrorist” for starters. It’s very clear that the issue of Iraqi involvement is very for from a closed book. The interim Iraqi leader Allawi claims they are uncovering evidence all the time adding to the already substantial body of evidence indicating that Saddam was covertly in cahoots with Al Qaeda.

In her book “The War Against America” Mylroie makes the a crucial assertion with regard to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad who was captured in Pakistan not so long ago. She claims he is not the man he claims to be, but rather is actually an Iraqi intelligence agent  a fact that would serve as smoking-gun evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the terror of Sept 11th.

As the operational leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, Mohammed is said to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and is thought to have planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. Mylroie maintains Mohammed is a Pakistani Baluch. Baluchs are Sunni Muslims who live in the desert regions of eastern Iran and western Pakistan  Baluchistan  and have longstanding ties to Iraqi intelligence. Wafiq Samarrai, former chief of Iraqi military intelligence who defected to the West in 1994, explains that Iraqi intelligence worked with the Baluch during the Iran-Iraq war.

According to seized forged documents, Mohammed was ostensibly born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents on April 19, 1965. That puts Mohammed just under 38 years of age. Mylroie suggests the graying sideburns and heavy jowls in Mohammed’s arrest photo circulated by federal agents belong to someone substantially older than 38.

Your references to “the torture” in Abhu Ghraib is simply ridiculous. What occurred in Abhu Ghraib was extreme romper room activity – sexual hijinks and low voltage shocks. I’m not condoning any of it – but please, let’s get real. That was a bad Monty Python episode involving nude guys jumping on top of each other etc – humiliating for the prisoners I’m sure, but in no stretch of the imagination torture with a capital “T”.

If you want to get upset about real torture, try the jails of arab countries – Syria for one. Nothing silly or Pythonesque about what goes on there. When you compare the idiocies of Abhu Ghraib with the techniques of Saddam’s secret police – the Mukhabarat – the distinction is fairly clear. One of the specialities of Saddam’s thugs was to gauge out the eyes of a child in order to break the will of the watching parents and force a confession. Other diabolical methods were used that don’t bear repeating. THAT is torture … Abhu Ghraib was a humiliation exercise.

I think the American forces have shown remarkably good taste actually, and conducted themselves on the whole in a professional manner. Try looking elsewhere in the Middle East for bad taste – I guarantee you will find it.